Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday January 22, 2012 @05:22AM
from the some-things-are-worse-than-sopa dept.

An anonymous reader points out the case of Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian-born permanent resident of Canada who worked as a web developer. In 2008, during a visit to Iran, Malekpour was arrested and detained by Iranian authorities on charges that he designed and moderated "adult content websites." In 2009, he was sentenced to death for "acting against the national security, insulting and desecrating the principles of Islam, and agitating the public mind." Malekpour wrote photo-uploading software, and in a letter he sent from prison, he said it was used by porn sites without his knowledge. This week an Iranian court reviewed the case and confirmed that the death sentence was an acceptable punishment. According to one Canadian publication, "Human rights monitors believe that Malekpour, one of a number of people held on Internet-related charges, is trapped by a convoluted justice system that is manipulated by rival factions in Iran."

One day a guy was sleeping in the sun with his pants off, and the papa tapeworm and the baby tapeworm got out in the sun. It was a first for the baby, so it looked at everything with big eyes and started asking. Pa, pa, what is this big shiny blue dome? The sky, son, the sky. Pa, pa, what is this shiny yellow thing in the middle of the sky? The sun, son, the sun. Pa, pa, what is the beautiful green thing all around? A meadow, son, with flowers. Pa, pa, when there are so many beautiful things in the world, why do we live in this stinking hole? Motherland, son, motherland.

Disclaimer: I am an Iranian with intimate knowledge of the case. The whole story is not being told, and I will fill in the blanks for you:

No one knew, at first, why Saeed was arrested. I'm a friend of his and my parents are friends to his parents. His parents are nice people, a well known upper middle class couple. His dad was confident that after the reason of his arrest was divulged he would be able to find a nice specialist lawyer and get his son out of jail. Everyone thought the same. Maybe he had some dope on him, wherever. A minor charge he thought. And so did I.

After a few days, I went with his family to the first trial. The judge, looking bored, asked:

- DA, what's the charge?

The accusation lawyer started talking:

- This men produced heinous websites...

At this point, everyone though the same: PORN! A minor charge! great!

-... which used Flash, the Flash DRM plugin...

Oh oh. I was sure he would get some caning. No good.

-... and only worked in IE6!

Oh boy, things are getting bad. The judge covered his head with his hand. His family was desperate. His mother shouted: "Why, Saeed, why?!". Saeed was charged with "Crime equivalent to sex with a donkey". And, unfortunately, sentenced to death...

I recently heard of a case of Germans living in New Zealand being arrested and extradited to America to face punishment under American law even tho those German born citizens didn't vote for American laws nor vote to be represented by American politics.